SciFiChick.com was recently able to interview author Alex Bledsoe to discuss his Eddie LaCrosse series and recent release, Wake of the Bloody Angel. (Reviewed here.)
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Can you tell us a bit about Wake of the Bloody Angel in your own words?
Like all the prior Eddie LaCrosse novels, this one is a mystery at heart. Eddie is hired by his landlord, the enigmatic Angelina, to discover what happened to the great love of her life, the pirate Black Edward Tew. He vanished twenty years earlier on his way back to her with the richest pirate treasure ever recorded. To follow this very cold trail, Eddie enlists the help of Jane Argo, another sword jockey who was once a pirate captain herself. They charter a pirate hunting ship, crewed by former buccaneers now barely on the right of side of the law. There are battles, horrors and surprises before the final revelations about the fate of Black Edward.
What is a sword jockey? How did you come up with this idea?
In my secondary-fantasy world, he’s the equivalent of a private detective. People hire him to find things out, to discover if other people are doing bad things, and to resolve problems. I invented the designation because there wasn’t an equivalent accepted term in fantasy. The closest would be “mercenary,” I suppose, but that doesn’t include solving mysteries or locating missing persons. I wanted something that had the same slang feel as “private eye” or “shamus,” but was particular to a faux-medieval world. “Sword jockey” seemed to fit.
The Eddie LaCrosse series has the feel of a detective novel or an urban fantasy but is set in a more traditional fantasy world. Was there a reason you went this unconventional route?
For years–and we’re talking at least twenty of them–I tried to write the story that became the first novel, THE SWORD-EDGED BLONDE, as a more traditional fantasy. It never worked, or rather, it never came to life. It was a compendium of tropes, all done better by other fantasy authors, and all failing to create the effect I was after. Finally I realized that, since I adored reading hard-boiled detective novels as much as I did fantasy, that perhaps combining the detective-style narrative voice with the accoutrements of fantasy would create something interesting. And it did. I just wish I’d thought of it sooner.
How do you see Eddie’s relationship with Liz progressing?
